


Non-standardized response

by strawberriesandtophats



Series: No such things as stability (only flux) [5]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Boys In Love, Disabled Character, Found Family, Other, Slice of Life, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24774706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberriesandtophats/pseuds/strawberriesandtophats
Summary: In which Rufus Drumknott momentarily considers pouring a kettle of scorching tea in a man's lap for being rude to his spouse, Pessimal makes adventurous choices in ice-cream flavors and there is exactly the right amount of pencils.
Relationships: Rufus Drumknott/A. E. Pessimal
Series: No such things as stability (only flux) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758511
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

A.E Pessimal knocked primly on the door of the staff entrance at the Patrician’s Palace, listening to the sounds of the ceaseless bustle inside. It was traditional to knock before you unlocked the door, so to let those that might have been in the way of the door get away.

There was a flash of silver as he found the right key, beside the new shiny one to a nice place that still felt like a dream. He stepped into the hallway, which was warm because it was so close to the kitchens.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Pessimal,” said Mx Holly Groom, one of the most experienced clacks-people at the Palace, who had been hired because of their ability to read Tacticus cipers as if it were plaintext as well as fighting off bears and aristocrats when they’d been working in the deep forest clacks towers in Uberwald during the hunting season. “Come to give the team more of those encipered ledgers?”

Pessimal handed over a coffee-stained and ink-smudged pile of papers.

“They’re using a transposition ciper in their notes to each other in the margins and I suspect that the words at the end are nulls,” Pessimal said. “Some of the younger accountants are former clacks people, so it’s a mix of their old codes and non-standard practices, as well.”

If it had been a small grocer trying to hide some minor fumbling with the business, it was one thing. That kind of business lived and died on the margins, just like the fresh-produce stalls in the morning and night markets. Those ledgers were simple and clear, the numbers not matching up quite right. And those business people tended to like the new sturdy red metal filing cabinets that were being sold for pretty cheap. So, things were organized. They had to be.

Then there were other kinds of people. That hid their real ledgers away, only showing him the cleaned-up, fake ones and who’s grins faltered when he dug around until he did in fact find the real ones and uncovered all their secrets and lies.

The big companies were the worst offenders, who didn’t just skim some cream on top but tried to take the cow away as well.

And the grocery store that Pessimal had visited today had become something else, perhaps not as big as the Grand Trunk had once been, but close. First they had hunted down the best grocers and convinced them to join them in a larger building. Then the fudging of the ledgers had happened and the cooking of the books. And now the Palace clerks were all going to bring it down like a castle made of cards. It had begun to crush their fellow grocers underneath its heel, buying almost all the fresh produce that came to the city and leaving nothing for the rest.

But if you were patient enough to stick around to strip away the lies and solve all the puzzles, the truth would be found.

“I may or may not have flipped Mr. Lipwig upside down and shaken him until the stolen Merchant’s Guild code book fell out of his pocket,” Mx . Groom said. “So, if it is that code they are using, we’ve got it.”

“Did you find some of Rufus’s pencils?” Pessimal asked.

“I gave them back to him,” Mx. Groom said. “I know that you clerks have rules about how sharp the pencils you use when numbering your files have to be.”

“Thank you for that,” Pessimal answered. “He’s fond of his pencils.”

“I’ll let you go fetch him so you can go on your date,” Mx. Groom said as Pessimal put the ledgers into their cart. They waved goodbye, dragging the cart full of ledgers behind them.

Pessimal made his way down the hallway, smelling the rising bread and the three-day cured pork shoulder that was grilled after being seasoned liberally, and the morning muffins that were being ruined by the baker because she always wanted to add berries to the batter.

His family had been bakers for generations until his mother had married both a math teacher and an accountant at the same time, who had then produced eight children together, none of which had turned out to be bakers, but all of which had become extremely thorough and detail-orientated.

That was why A. E had opinions about baking, mostly about how bakers should focus on simplicity instead of adding all the ingredients in the world to their creations. There was nothing wrong with a plain pound cake, he had ranted at Drumknott more than once, explaining the importance of the ratio of butter, flour, sugar and eggs. Adding vanilla and lemon/orange/chocolate to the batter made it a different thing altogether.

It turned out that he did not have to climb all the way up the Oblong Office to find Drumknott. It was almost midnight, so most of the day-time bustle was gradually dying down.

“A.E?” a familiar voice said from one of the smaller staff rooms. “Is that you?”

“Here,” Pessimal said, turning around.

Drumknott was standing by a tall table, having put his hands into the basin of hot water. His worn wrist braces were neatly put away in their basket. He kept his hands in the water as Pessimal approached him, listening to the thuds of thousands of clerks and maids walking on the floors above them.

They were going home too, most of them.

The night shift wasn’t as grueling as it had been when Vetinari had become Patrician and thousands had been hired as clerks because former Patricians had hired clerks that had used the famous put-the-damn-papers-on-the-floor method of filing instead of building shelves.

But Pessimal was the fifth child and used to working with others, so he’d delved right into making color-coded folders and labeling them with his coworkers, filling up box after box and cabinet after cabinet.

And now that the city was functioning well, it became even more important that the mountains of paper and oceans of ink that were used to make the paperwork that flowed through and into the Palace easily accessible and well organized.

A.E Pessimal lingered in the doorway, looking at Drumknott’s light grey suit and crisp shirt, which hid his stab wound that ached in the night. There were tiny flowers and leaves on his tie, a deviation from the usual solid color or quiet pattern and a clear sign that he’d woken up happy this morning.

Drumknott’s face was still dripping water, the washcloth beside the basin damp. That meant that he’d been pressing it against his eyes to try to wipe away some of the exhaustion, to give them some kind of brief relief.

“How are you doing?” Pessimal both said and signed, just in case it was one of the nights where Drumknott was either so tired that he simply could not talk or preferred not to use his voice at all. That had been the case most nights after he’d been stabbed and often after particularly taxing days in the Oblong Office.

“You know how it is,” Drumknott said, his hands moving around a little in the basin. “Quiet, so I spent most of my time catching up on the paperwork.”

“You have to be careful, Rufus,” Pessimal said.

Pessimal’s brief time in the Watch had meant that he had a deep understanding of how it worked, but it had also left him with the lingering effects of a concussion, hearing loss and broken ribs and a broken hand. He’d trained replacements and left, going back to the Palace.

He’d learned to sign after he found out that his ears simply didn’t work as they used to do. There had been a class or two, and a few books. It was slow and halting, but he’d found that Drumknott and others had responded with delight that he was doing his best.

Not long after he’d come back to work at the Palace, they’d started courting. It had been a risk, of course. A calculated one. And he was very good at math.

They’d known each other for years, even if they had never worked for the same department within the Palace, they both liked to be precise and thorough and careful, but would also take risks if pushed far enough.

And they both felt lucky to have had each other around for a good chunk of their lives, there to lean on and huddle together in the staff room with cups of tea. Dating each other had always felt like a fascinating adventure.

Pessimal had taken Drumknott to a ice-cream place for their first date, where they’d both deviated from their usual choice of vanilla and had strawberry and lemon, respectively. Drumknott had later confessed that tasting that lemon ice-cream had somehow felt like he had been committing a crime.

But it had been a fun night.

“I thought we might go to the market on our way home, get something to eat-“ Pessimal began when Drumknott did not move his hands at all, just breathed in.

“I talked with his lordship about reducing my hours,” Drumknott said, finally pulling his hands out of the basin and drying them. “Not just the occasional morning off, but weekends and proper holidays.”

“Oh,” Pessimal said, blinking.

“It’s all been in my contract all this time, but I’ve just been following his example and worked around the clock,” Drumknott continued, words pouring out of him. “But I figured that this wasn’t very…family friendly. And since he’s been taking better care of his health and I’ve got other things than work now, I might as well take the plunge.”

Family friendly.

They were two people and they had been courting for a few years now. They wore simple engagement rings, a change that had outright caused Vetinari to do a triple take when he’d seen the one on Drumknott’s finger.

And they lived together, they had a cat and all kinds of plants on the balcony.

Not every family went the traditional route when it came to having kids. And when it had been suggested to them by a distant relative who’d known Pessimal as young individual that he did in fact have the tools to make kids, so why bother with all this fuss if that was an option, Pessimal had promptly frozen in alarm.

Drumknott had not. Perhaps it was the years in the Oblong Office, dealing with every kind of rude behavior or simply the fact that he’d had enough of this person acting this way at the Pessimal monthly family gathering.

Drumknott had quietly explained that they already had adoption papers from the orphanage on the kitchen table, back home. When they’d visited, they’d met a nine-year old girl named Ada that excelled in math and understood them pretty much perfectly when they’d greeted her in sign language when they’d been told that she didn’t talk at all.They’d had a nice day out with her, getting to know her. On Monday, they’d hand over the papers and take her home with them.

He’d then slowly picked up the teapot and poured tea into A.E’s cup while maintaining hard eye contact with a relative that appeared to be reconsidering his life choices because he was beginning to fear that the rest of the tea would be poured on him if he did not behave.

“It would be nice to both be home at the same time,” Pessimal managed. “Spend the years together instead of inside various filing cabinets and offices.”

“Yes,” Drumknott said, moving his fist up and down to sign it too. “Especially since we’ve got such a nice place now.”

“No more bedsits for us,” Pessimal said. “We’ve even got two spare rooms.”

They’d agreed to hire all kinds of Guild-trained experts to help them fix up their new place, to put in new floors and deep clean the tiles in the kitchen and bathroom, not to mention to move the furniture up the stairs. He didn’t want Drumknott to injure himself any further.

And now everything was ready.

One was for Ada. It had a good bed, a wardrobe with new outfits and a bookcase will lots of books and comics. A small desk for when she’d do her homework and if she wanted to draw or assemble puzzles. And even a small train track made of wood perched on top of the drawers.

The other one was a home office. With many sharp pencils.

“Do you want to get going?” Pessimal asked. “The night market will be open soon, and they’ll hopefully have the tea that you like.”

Drumknott nodded, picking up his briefcase and shrugging on his coat and scarf so to be well protected against the nighttime chill.

Clerks and maids and chefs nodded at him as they passed by, most of them smiling as well. He’d worked with most of them for years.

“Good night, everyone,” Drumknott said, his voice already rough and his pace as slow as it got. The fact that he had not asked Pessimal to find a cab meant that he was feeling well enough for a walk, but he still handed Pessimal his briefcase and put on his tinted glasses.

By the time they came home, they had got enough groceries for the week, eaten hot-crossed buns and purchased a small stuffed dragon for Ada.

It was still a treat to be able to open the door to their very own home, to put the food away into the cool cupboard and the pantry closet. And to be able to get ready for bed without worrying that anyone would act as if they were doing something wrong.

The city had changed, so had their lives.

Pessimal took off his jacket and waistcoat in the bedroom, then the linen shirt and the coarser and tighter shirt underneath that one.

Next came the trousers and socks, everything neatly draped over a chair before he put on his nightclothes and slid underneath the covers. He only woke up when a freshly showered Drumknott lay down beside him, taking his hand.

Then he drifted off to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Drumknott had been invisible most of his life. The fact that he preferred dull grey suits and was on the shorter side helped, but mostly it was because that he could choose to be as quiet as a church mouse if the occasion called for it.

He’d always had a sense of which floorboards not to step on, how to breathe so that he would not be heard. He’d played enough games of hide and seek with his siblings and pulled enough all-nighters when studying when they were sleeping next to him to know how to be as silent as humanly possible.

It was useful to be able to fade so to become a part of the background when he was at work in the Oblong Office, to ensure that people there would forget the man with the tea tray or files or tucking a pen into his pocket. Most people though that just being in there was punishment enough, being observed being there and in front of the Patrician was just another level of the nightmare.

So, it had been rather startling when A.E Pessimal had noticed him enough to compliment him on his intricate stationery collection and the thoroughness of his filing.

It had been a pleasure to work with Pessimal before and after he’d joined and left the Watch, seeing as he was a patient and observant man who spoke so very politely and treated other people with the uttermost gentleness.

Drumknott had not refused when Pessimal had showed up at his desk with some coffee from the kitchens, making a comment on the lateness of the hour and the work they had ahead of them because of the sheer amount of paperwork that had to be dealt with before morning. Rain had still been dripping from Pessimal’s hair, unstyled because he’d been woken up and called to the Palace to work, with the promise of overtime and at least two free meals.

Pessimal hadn’t questioned it when Drumknott became too exhausted to talk much, only began signing back when Drumknott asked him about a certain file having been put away in its box to be put away after it’d been labeled or added a wad of paper to the ‘problems to be solved later’ pile.

They had worked through the night at the same desk, ordering and re-stacking paperclipped files and then putting them away until they’d finished a mountain of them.

And then another mountain as other clerks bustled around them with stacks of files in their arms. Gong back and forth between filing cabinets and desks as fast as their legs and sometimes wheelchairs could carry them.

Everything had to be documented, that was what made it real.

When the dawn had come and they’d blinked at the sight of their clear desk and empty teapots, they had looked at each other and both realized that a beautiful thing had happened. A. E had ducked his head and cleaned his glasses, hiding a smile and Drumknott had let himself bask in the realization that he’d never have made it this far with someone else at his side.

Later on, one of the clerks had complimented them on their efficiency, remarking that it could either be considered to be deeply alarming how in sync they had been or alternatively that this had been a display of poetry in motion to see the files being exchanged between them without words or signs.

The next time that A.E had shown up in the anteroom to the Oblong Office for a meeting with the Patrician because of the new encrypted ledgers he’d found in a backroom of a well-known and established business and proceeded to calculate just how much they had tried to lie about their profits and business practices, Drumknott had slid him a freshly baked biscuit wrapped in a handkerchief. It had his initials embroidered on it.

Drumknott had returned it, washed and ironed and folded to perfection.

The third time A.E had smiled at him in the staff room, offering to hold Drumknott’s wrist braces as he soaked his hands and wrists and massaged them, Drumknott had decided that he liked A. E very much indeed.

Especially after he’d cornered Lipwig and demanded that he return those perfectly sharpened pencils he’d stolen. Lipwig had taken one look at A.E Pessimal and his shiny shoes, reconsidered some of his life-choices and handed them over with a bright apology and some verbal fumbling.

Lord Vetinari had looked up from his work, then joined Drumknott as they both hurried into the anteroom.

It was quite possible that Drumknott had never seen his lordship look as much like someone who had just been handed the best gossip in town as when they’d both spotted A. E had quietly put the pencils in their little jar on Drumknott’s desk before signing goodbye at them both.

And then A.E had hurried along, his shiny shoes glinting and briefcase swinging.

“What an admirable man,” Lord Vetinari observed. “Did you know that he can make most of the bankers in the city and beyond have an internal emotional meltdown just by being in the same room as them after you two worked through the night to expose their corruption?”

“He is very hardworking,” Drumknott said. “I like how he clearly numbers all his files and causes problems on purpose.”

“It is a part of his job description,” Lord Vetinari said.

“If we are going to have some chaos, it is only right that it should be organized and in the proper order,” Drumknott said. “I do admit that it was a delight to watch him pull out every single receipt when the head of the Baker’s Guild tried to weasel his way out of the accusations that were brought up last week.”

“Mx Groom and Leonard had no trouble with the real ledgers that he’d hidden behind the flour sacks, seeing as the code was just a mix of different codes instead of a new one as we feared.”

“It is good to have competent people around,” Drumknott said as they’d headed back to the Oblong Office, his lordship holding onto the rail to support himself.

Vetinari had hummed, as if he was pleased to have been able to relocate power so far and wide throughout his city that he was no longer holding all of it and that every day people with all kinds of skills helped make the Disc a better place.

Pessimal and Drumknott were not people that shoved the other one into a broom closet to kiss. Or the kind that liked much fuss.

Instead they’d sat each other down at Drumknott’s old kitchen table in his tidy bedsit, and essentially had a meeting about their relationship. They had brought out schedules to figure out when they could go on dates and to meet each other’s families, noted down all kinds of likes and dislikes and listened as the other one talked and signed.

It was far better to do this sensibly, rather than to fumble along.

Pessimal had looked around at the jars of cereal and oats and fermented cabbage, noted the well-loved pots and pans and the smell of soup in the air. And he’d smiled.

They had both been pleased with their findings and the other one’s delight in listening to their stories and recollections and explanations of why they loved their hobbies and lives.

Only then had they gone to bed.

Not shedding clothes as they went, but taking them off and draping them over the chair or folding them before sitting down on the narrow bed.

The kisses were clumsy at first, hands not knowing where they could settle or touch much, noses bumping and glasses crashing into each other. Drumknott had to wash his hands free of product after spending too much time trying to stroke through Pessimal’s hair, only succeeding in messing it up and making Pessimal so flustered that he had to lie down on the pillow to get his breathing under control.

But when Drumknott returned, wrist braces left behind and blushing, things got very interesting indeed.

To the point where the noise that the springs were making caused the downstairs neighbor to start yelling and hitting his ceiling with a broom.

They kept going anyway.

After all, they were not people who half-assed anything.

They were not going to start now.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews encouraged and appreciated!


End file.
